(non-)GM's Lament
While walking back to work from dinner, I had a vague vision of a fantasy colony game...
A ship of settlers and explorers arriving in a new land, unknown and untamed, but not necessarily uninhabitted. Whatever their background or motivation, they have to rely on one another to some extent to set up a home and learn about the place they have come to. ... It's hardly a new concept, though probably explored more in sci-fi than fantasy (just look at the last two Stargate series).
My mind framed this loosely in the setting of Furryfaire, which immediately had me thinking about magic. If there's to be any atmosphere of isolation at all, magic has to be limited. The thought that came to mind was a property of the land (literally the earth and/or air) that saps essence such that the power of magic drastically drops off as the distance it operates over increases. This makes magics of large scale and range basically impossible, but still allows for magical effects. There'd be more touch-based spells and it even occurred to me this might visually be somewhat like Avatar: TLA (where 'bending effects are usually short-range). It neatly rules out teleportation, portals, or city-blasting, which is most of what I would want to avoid.
Of course, that leaves the reason to be explained. I pondered some undeath-like anti-magical effect, or some warped essence flow of ley lines that deliberately draws in magic perhaps to be gathered somewhere (mmm, essence geodes), but since this is more a thought exercise and I don't have any real plans to run with it, I shelved that mental discussion for another time.
And then... then I started to think about how players would screw with the premise.
Of course, it's natural that characters would want to be able to get support from "home," and would expend some effort in that direction. Why rough it if you don't actually have to? But some players, being themselves, will obsess over this and grind any game rules possible to get their way. "Good" for the PCs, not so good for the story...
Magics that draw on extraplanar power are relatively easy to mess with - elemental or infernal energy can be siphoned off just like ambient essence. Glamour might be harder, though I could still see the argument that the properties of the place might be different enough to make it harder to bend "reality." Aria... hmm. That stumped me a bit. Aria is musical, and from my understanding is sort of like naming magics, where understanding the "language" is an understanding of how everything works and how to use that. I visualize it less about energy flow than most magics. I suppose I could say that reality in the new land is just different enough that known Aria is effectively "off key," and thus works differently or randomly, though I think some people might complain at that and argue that Aria is universal in the greater setting. And even if that worked, it opens the door for people learning a new Aria that would be unrestricted. Urgh.
Those specifics aside, there are other applications of magic to worry about. If the PCs can't make a portal to home in their settlement... maybe they could make one out at sea? That's a horribly reasonable idea. And that's about where I feel like in order to preserve a core campaign concept as a GM, I would have to actually struggle against the players. Any magic-limiting factor would have a limit of its own, so even if you have to create a barge a day or few from shore, that's better than months across the sea to a home continent, and makes getting support vastly easier. So I have to either accept it or... what? Saying the effect extends all the way home is a little silly and "mean." Having sea creatures destroy it (probably more than once) has a similar effect.
And... that's about where my interest dropped off. Like trying to answer a kid who keeps asking "why?" thinking about ways to thwart player efforts in an attempt to maintain a core idea for a game just stops being fun pretty quick...
A ship of settlers and explorers arriving in a new land, unknown and untamed, but not necessarily uninhabitted. Whatever their background or motivation, they have to rely on one another to some extent to set up a home and learn about the place they have come to. ... It's hardly a new concept, though probably explored more in sci-fi than fantasy (just look at the last two Stargate series).
My mind framed this loosely in the setting of Furryfaire, which immediately had me thinking about magic. If there's to be any atmosphere of isolation at all, magic has to be limited. The thought that came to mind was a property of the land (literally the earth and/or air) that saps essence such that the power of magic drastically drops off as the distance it operates over increases. This makes magics of large scale and range basically impossible, but still allows for magical effects. There'd be more touch-based spells and it even occurred to me this might visually be somewhat like Avatar: TLA (where 'bending effects are usually short-range). It neatly rules out teleportation, portals, or city-blasting, which is most of what I would want to avoid.
Of course, that leaves the reason to be explained. I pondered some undeath-like anti-magical effect, or some warped essence flow of ley lines that deliberately draws in magic perhaps to be gathered somewhere (mmm, essence geodes), but since this is more a thought exercise and I don't have any real plans to run with it, I shelved that mental discussion for another time.
And then... then I started to think about how players would screw with the premise.
Of course, it's natural that characters would want to be able to get support from "home," and would expend some effort in that direction. Why rough it if you don't actually have to? But some players, being themselves, will obsess over this and grind any game rules possible to get their way. "Good" for the PCs, not so good for the story...
Magics that draw on extraplanar power are relatively easy to mess with - elemental or infernal energy can be siphoned off just like ambient essence. Glamour might be harder, though I could still see the argument that the properties of the place might be different enough to make it harder to bend "reality." Aria... hmm. That stumped me a bit. Aria is musical, and from my understanding is sort of like naming magics, where understanding the "language" is an understanding of how everything works and how to use that. I visualize it less about energy flow than most magics. I suppose I could say that reality in the new land is just different enough that known Aria is effectively "off key," and thus works differently or randomly, though I think some people might complain at that and argue that Aria is universal in the greater setting. And even if that worked, it opens the door for people learning a new Aria that would be unrestricted. Urgh.
Those specifics aside, there are other applications of magic to worry about. If the PCs can't make a portal to home in their settlement... maybe they could make one out at sea? That's a horribly reasonable idea. And that's about where I feel like in order to preserve a core campaign concept as a GM, I would have to actually struggle against the players. Any magic-limiting factor would have a limit of its own, so even if you have to create a barge a day or few from shore, that's better than months across the sea to a home continent, and makes getting support vastly easier. So I have to either accept it or... what? Saying the effect extends all the way home is a little silly and "mean." Having sea creatures destroy it (probably more than once) has a similar effect.
And... that's about where my interest dropped off. Like trying to answer a kid who keeps asking "why?" thinking about ways to thwart player efforts in an attempt to maintain a core idea for a game just stops being fun pretty quick...
Such is the issue with the setting of Faire and the previous canonical exceptions to the "rules" made in "New lands". The only true way to run the idea is either in a different world altogether, or have the barrier by which magic stops working be so absolute that it shuts off anything known, doesn't allow anything to cross it, and even after going back through it physically that person's magic is severed for weeks or months. Or even harsher, once through the barrier, you can no longer go back. Stranger in a strange land indeed.
ReplyDeletePart of the problem (for my thinking) is the magic-can-do-anything core concept. Then a GM has to come up with ways to prevent what he doesn't want, and that gets to feeling like deliberate railroading rather easily. It can be done, but it just gets unwieldy at some point. Sorta like finding ways to introduce any sort of mystery with Oracle scrying.
ReplyDelete